[takluyver]

I see a disturbing amount of this attitude: it's fine for corporations to be as unethical as they can get away with, and it's up to government to constantly rein them in.

I don't buy it. No, it's not Google's responsibility to find ways to pay tax, but they also shouldn't be constantly finding ways not to pay tax. A company is not a function relentlessly optimising for money, it's made up of real people making decisions. I expect those people to use some sense of what's morally right, not just what the law allows them to do.

The law is a heavy, slow implement, especially when multiple countries are involved. Multinational corporations can rearrange their accounts much faster than we can pass legislation to control them. It's like playing whack-a-mole with a vote before each hammer swing.

If they're dodging taxes within the letter of the law, they can expect judgement in the court of public opinion. Which is how this debate started.

[dasil003]

> I see a disturbing amount of this attitude: it's fine for corporations to be as unethical as they can get away with, and it's up to government to constantly rein them in.

That's not my attitude at all. My attitude is just one tiny facet of that attitude, which is that no one should have to pay more taxes than they are legally required to. I don't, for instance, think that corporations should be free to maximize profit by toeing the EPA line.

With regards to taxes, what's unethical about using the law to one's advantage? This isn't a rich guy socking away millions in the Bahamas; as far as we know there's nothing shady going on at all. Furthermore, we know Google pays some amount of tax all around the world and that they employee a lot of people in the UK all of whom pay gobs of taxes. Google decision of where and how to open offices may well be shaped by these tax laws, so it's really not fair to attract a company to your country with a certain tax regime, and then berate them for not following the "social contract" or whatever. Google is not a UK company. It didn't start in the UK, and it doesn't have to operate here. If tax laws change Google has to deal with it, so do it, but you can't have your cake and eat it too by attracting them in with a certain tax regime and then painting them as some sort of greedy villains because their accounts don't interpret the intention of the law and voluntarily decline tax breaks.

[takluyver]

I'm not suggesting they should make saintly donations of money without anyone asking them. I'm saying they shouldn't find ways to weasel out of taxes that it's pretty clear they're intended to pay. That's what they were accused of.

I don't know what schemes Google has come up with, but Starbucks faced similar criticism recently, and I heard a bit about what they do. The Starbucks 'brand' is owned by a company somewhere with minimal taxes. Starbucks UK pays 'royalties' to that company which conveniently come to just about all of its profits. Then Starbucks UK tells the taxman that it's making almost no profit, and hence owes almost no tax. That's not just 'interpretation', that's an out-and-out loophole. They have found a way to disguise their profits (and they do call them profits to their investors). Given enough time, we can close that loophole, but not nearly as quickly as they find a new one. So I'll get angry with them, and hope that if enough people do, maybe they'll stop hunting for loopholes and pay their taxes.